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Energy Storage for sunny days and fresh breezes (15.04.2014)

Younicos, in partnership with Samsung SDI and Green Utility, was awarded a tender to supply a 1 MW/1MWh high-power battery to the Italian grid operator Terna, with another 1 MW/1 MWh system in option. The Berlin-based storage and renewables specialists will install the fully automated storage on Sardinia. Deployed as part of the "Storage lab” project under Terna’s "2012 Grid Defense Plan”, the intelligent control software developed by Younicos will enable the lithium-ion battery, together with the other solutions, to stabilize the Sardinian island grid. Following successful completion of the "Storage Lab” phase, Terna will order a further 24 MW of energy storage solutions to be deployed on the Sardinian and Sicilian grids.

With an installed capacity more than 25 GW, wind and solar energy already contribute more than 15 per cent to electricity generation in Italy. In specific cases, such as the main islands of Sicily and Sardinia, PV and Wind combine to generate more than 30 per cent of the total installed capacity. This is a problem whenever the islands’ grids become detached from continental Italy, because frequency fluctuations become much harder to offset. Thus the grid operator Terna is investing heavily in the expansion of the storage infrastructure in these islands, the initial stage of which is the evaluation of different storage technologies .

Younicos has been successfully using batteries in its in-house Technology Center to stabilize the east German control area of grid operator "50 Hertz" since 2012 and is currently building lithium-ion battery parks in Schwerin and the UK.